Condo sales break record

Condo sales break record

And other highlights from a busy day of stats releases in Toronto real estate.

All industry eyes are keenly fixed on the Toronto real estate market following last month’s reveal of Ontario’s new housing plan; and while it’ll still take a few months to see how it all shakes out, early stats are already in.

And they include record-breaking condo sales.

A total of 9,932 new condo units were sold in the GTA in Q1 2017, up 73% year-over-year.

“The shortening of holding periods for some condo buyers is an outcome of the rapidly accelerating market”, said Shaun Hildebrand, Urbanation’s Senior Vice President. “Although the share of short-term condo market participants still appears relatively low, it will be important to monitor the situation closely going forward as market conditions evolve.”

However, condo sales appeared to slow last month, despite still increasing year-over-year.

According to the Toronto Real Estate Board, a total of 2,148 condos were sold in April, up 7.7% year-over-year.

Still, condos supply isn’t keeping up with demand, according to Urbanation.

“A total of 6,293 new units were launched for pre-sale in Q1, compared to 3,061 units a year ago. With demand continuing to far outpace new supply, the inventory of unsold condos in development plunged by 61% annually to 6,481 units — the lowest level of the past 15-year condo boom,” it said in a release. “With only 2.5 months of inventory on the market, new launches would need to substantially outweigh sales going forward to bring the market into a balanced state of 10 months.”

Presales also hit a record last quarter, with 94% of units under development sold prior to completion; that was up from 86% in Q1 2016 and 84% in Q1 2015.